


The Road to Sonoma

by Lani



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: M/M, pre-QotD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 11:59:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13612929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lani/pseuds/Lani
Summary: 1970. Santino is on the way to California and finds his journey interrupted by a very familiar face.





	The Road to Sonoma

In the distance the churches and TV towers of Mexico City slowly fell behind the horizon, a tide of glistening lights receding. He held this place in high esteem, seeking the traces of Spanish plazas and mansions in the colonial architecture. The twin spires of the metropolitan cathedral held up the cloud-thick sky and oversaw the net of boulevards and backstreet alleys that spread out among the clusters of tightly packed apartment blocks. He saw the echoes of proud Madrid and fiery Barcelona in the mosaic tiles that filled the public spaces. A piece of European history, drenched in blood as all history so often was, in this brave new world. And, also like most of history, this horrendous conquest had passed him by in its time. He had to discover the Americas all on his own, belatedly.

One could say he was in the process of this. Up the hillside he had gone, following a half-forgotten trail that lay sprinkled with dead leaves and loose pebbles, past pastures and anorexic pine trees. Tufts of fog and mist had gathered around the mountain top, shielding it from view where it had already been reduced to a looming shadow by the waxing moonlight. On his way he had passed a small ramshackle hut, put together with wood panels and corrugated iron sheets. The goats and sheep had already been safely guarded back to their pens, no doubt, and only an old cat had been left sitting by a wiry garden fence. As he walked by the animal startled, arching its back and leaping aside with fear-stiffened legs.

Santino knew of the three people inside the hovel and for a moment his strides slowed as he listened. Their melodious, raspy voices filled his ears with their worries and hopes. Dinner time. Mother would fill the plates with rice and thick juicy cuts of fried paprika, fat with dripping oil. Father would drink his cheap beer and stuff tobacco into his old pipe. And the child? Quite lost in her own world. She dreamed of the next day in school, how impressed they all would be if only she had the pink satchel her friends had been talking about. Like a voyeur, Santino sampled this snapshot in time and committed it to memory. In the night he was well hidden and the shawl he wore covered enough of his pale face so that he would not seem a ghastly apparition in the open field. He had a way of staring at mortals, he who had been so removed from them for so very long. Baffled, he watched them go about their menial tasks and fret over their miniscule shortcomings. Their warmth enraptured him, their fleshliness, the acuteness of their needs. But along with this fascination came an unbidden hunger; love balancing on the knife’s edge, about to behead itself. Santino turned to move on, deeper into the wilderness.

He had planned to pass the mountain range before the night’s end. If the weather held he’d even make it much farther north. The earth was not good in this place, difficult to dig into. He wouldn’t want to lodge out here, caught unawares by the rising sun. And besides, he told himself as he picked up his pace, there were still miles to go before he made it to the United States, let alone Sonoma. Once he had crossed the border he would find himself a car, he resolved. As he outlined his next steps, idly and with no urgency to it, he turned to survey his surroundings. There was always something to look at out here.

The woods had quickly made way for dusty underbrush, brambles clawing at his boots and legs. Soon enough there’d be nothing left below his feet but hard rock. The air was wet and cool, nothing like the rising heat of the valley. Silence ran through the thinning forest like a beast of prey, loping on heavy paws, fangs gleaming. Nothing stirred the air, not even his own breath. The sky bloomed into an oppressive weight, sinking down onto the ridge of the mountain tops. He might knock his head on a cloud if he stepped too carelessly. The trail had turned into sandy ground, only hinting at use, inviting to lose your way. Removed from culture so brusquely, he suddenly felt half abandoned by the world.

It was a feeling of strange timelessness to be a stranger in a strange land, an entire country filled with people who didn’t know your name. One could learn to go nameless in such solitude. How simple suddenly the thought to leave the trodden path and break into the wilderness, allow himself to be swallowed up by lush thicket, become another shape in the landscape to be mistaken for a tree. Prowling along the edges of the moonlight, another pair of eyes peering out of a forest. He could grow feral here. It was a feral land. Numbness would spread through his mind, the neighbor to stupidity. And he would perhaps lose all sense of self so that he forgot to speak and only knew how to whimper and growl, coyotes his cohorts. A nocturnal animal, frightened by headlights and engine noise. It had happened to others. From time to time an old one would emerge, stumbling onto a parking lot or unused motorway, shriveled to a skeleton with not a single sound thought in their head. Santino would not wish to end like that, so he pressed on. And besides, he was not allowed to dwell on such morbid curiosities for long.

His mind picked up on it before his ears did. A current in the ground, a pulsing in the air, a rush of feet striking the ground. Santino froze and looked up. He listened. A heartbeat, tolling like an iron bell, a heartbeat so powerful it could move centuries. He had listened for that heartbeat countless times. Anticipation and disbelief whipped him about, his gaze darting anxiously from shadow to shadow. And then, a streak of white in the black racing towards him. 

Santino’s heart leapt in his chest, right into his throat. There was no way-- The bag of sparse belongings he traveled with slipped from his shoulder and to the ground. He had just enough time to open his arms before the hard body of another blood drinker collided with his, tearing him off his feet. To his surprise he didn’t fall but was swung around back against the hard chest of the other, that chest that harbored the roaring pulse. Santino heard a breathless laugh climb out of his open mouth as he wrapped his arms around the other. A soft timbre answered his, long fingers twisting through his hair as they turned.

“What are you _doing_ here?” Eric cried, his pale face brilliant with joy. He spoke a rural Spanish, perhaps with a Chilean dialect buried at its core. But there was no telling, not really, for Eric’s own Indo-European accent colored the words with a palette all its own. He clasped the Italian’s shoulders, an innocent delight quickening the hue of his pallor until he almost seemed to have color again. Santino was shaken by this sudden reunion, chest tight with joy of his own. He felt faint as Eric pulled him close to place a quick cool kiss on his lips. All not to interrupt him, should he find his wits about him to speak.

Again, he only laughed, a helpless little sound. “What am _I_ doing here? You said you’d come over from Japan,” He accused, his voice made soft as warm wax by affection. They could not stop holding onto one another, for fear the other would turn out to be nothing but a mirage. Like children they embraced again and pulled one another close, like birds in flight circling each other. It was a leaping dance. Santino could scarcely believe it even as he held his hands and kissed him again and again, in greeting, in love.

“I thought I heard you,” Eric went on, now reining himself in to assume his mild air of aloof irony, an air he had cultivated over years of careful practice. But that smile, that radiant smile. “I dropped out of the sky for you.”

“I wish you had given me a warning.” Santino shook his head, dizzy. “I didn’t think I’d see you so soon. I am hardly in any state,” He began but Eric’s raised brows interrupted him. Now that he had it made it so clear, of course Eric would take the time to inspect his companion’s appearance. Santino looked utterly the vagabond. A long weather-beat coat covered his simple ensemble of cargo pants and a loose-fitting shirt, and then the mud-covered boots.

“Look at you. You’ve gone and made a globetrotter of yourself.” Though he teased, there was a certain appreciative edge to his voice. He had always approved of less artificial looks. Silk and lace was wasted on this wanderer, a child of the fierce undecorated north. Eric seemed unfit for any standard of society but the wandering caravans that traveled ceaselessly from place to place. Dressed in windswept linen and wool, he had allowed no great expenses for his wardrobe. He never did. Soft brown curls framed his face, seeming almost black in the lack of light. He hadn’t taken a moment to brush his hair. It was far more likely to find Eric dressed in this manner than Santino, which perhaps elevated the occasion. There certainly was a glint to his smile.

“I plan on changing, don’t rejoice just yet. I had to take these off a mortal.” Santino cut Eric’s speculations short. There was a moment of calm between them, opening like a flower as they laughed. Suddenly it dawned on them that they were truly here and together, unprepared for each other’s company. Eric was still holding his hands between their bodies. It was the most peculiar thing to be held by these hands. They were smooth as river stones, polished by millennia, and just as cold. But there was a tenderness to them, a yielding quality. Santino could spend hours searching for the lines of his palms only to come up empty. But the ancient would never deny him the pleasure of the chase.

Now Santino looked up from their intertwined fingers, into the large dazzling eyes of his beloved Eric. Like dark ponds, his eyes invited him. If Santino stared long enough he was certain he would fall through his reflection and into the darkness they held at their center. For how long had he been looking into these eyes? Three centuries, four? Their cautious gaze had been on him for the first time in Rome, in the ruins of his past. And there he had ignored them for the favor of the dazzling radiance of wise and ancient Maharet. And then again, after his flight, his descent into madness, Eric’s eyes had spotted him in his misery and disorder. Under their supervision he recovered, learned the ways of the world he had shunned and condemned for so very long. They saw him dress in lace and velvet, in costly brocade and fine suits. They were the first thing he saw in the evening when they shared a sleeping place, Eric already awake and watching him, watching over him.

His eyes had lost nothing of their luster in the year or two that they had been separated. Eric had gone off to his jungles, his woods and steppes. Santino had gone on to Havana. Neither could hold the other for very long without a sense of discontent growing between them. Eric was not a man for hotel rooms and Santino did not love the solitude of nature. In Sonoma they had meant to meet, the one sure place where their worlds overlapped. Santino wondered if they might abandon their plan now that they were reunited without Maharet’s aid, but Eric would insist.

“It is so good to see you again.” Santino’s voice was a mere breath, as quiet as a confession. And Eric, smiling still, shrugged his shoulder and said: “I know.”

Together they continued their ascent. In excited voices they told each other of their travels and the people they had met. Santino had gone back to Egypt for a brief time and described in vivid detail the silver crests of the sand dunes and how they had blurred and shifted in the wind as he had ridden past. Eric on the other hand told him of his time in Nepal and China, of the tiny villages crowded in valley pockets and the endless snow on top of the Everest, how close the stars would seem. Santino promised to go with him the next time he had a mind to climb that mountain.

How harmonious they could have seemed to an onlooker; a pair stealing away in secrecy, looking for the particular privacy young love required. But as with many things, it was easier at a distance than up close to grasp the full picture. Anyone would have seen what made them other, what made them strangers to the land. They moved too quickly, with too much ease, as though their own bodies weighed nothing. Their beauty was but a symptom of their nocturnal condition. They were like twin specters in the wood, one orbiting the other. Crisp outlines separated them from shadows and their carrying voices filled the motionless air with fast-paced melodies. They were not fully immersed in the nature that surrounded them, simply unable to melt into the backdrop as any other creature might have. They were always half a step removed from all living things but each other. And Eric was talking about the films he had bought.

“Perhaps I should warn you,” Eric said eventually. “Maharet is keeping Mael around again.”

“Is that so?” Santino’s tone fell flat.

“It’s hardly a surprise at this point.”

“I don’t mind Mael’s company.”

Eric laughed, “Oh yes, you do.”

“He resents mine, that is not the same.”

Eric dropped off the boulder he’d been standing on and landed beneath, following the running path carved out by rain water washing down the mountain side. They had begun the descent. Santino followed with an easy step.

“Don’t be so quick to expect the worst. He takes getting used to but he’s a good and loyal friend. I think you’re growing on him after all.”

Santino shook his head and slid down the small slope before them. “I have never done him any harm to begin with.” He said, though quietly. Such claims were never comfortable on his lips. After all, how could he be sure?

Eric didn’t seem deterred. “I don’t think he much cares for harm done. At first perhaps, since the ordeal with the covens hadn’t been too long ago.” Santino clicked his tongue at his companion’s choice of words. ‘Ordeal’. He wondered how old he had to grow before he could look upon atrocities with such removed acknowledgment, before they seemed small enough to dismiss. “But,” Eric went on, somehow conscious of Santino’s tensing jaw. “After that first shock, I’m pretty certain he was just jealous.”

“What, of me?”

“Of course. You have a way of commanding the room, you know? Maharet neglected our poor Gaul in favor of you for some time.”

“If he thinks I plan to steal Maharet from him then he really hasn’t been paying attention.” Santino quipped, somewhat appeased. Even he didn’t truly know what the relationship between Mael and the ancient woman entailed, if the love they shared (and it was certainly love) was of romantic or subservient nature. But then, who of them, wanderers through time all connected by the red string woven from the witch’s hair, would not do her bidding if she asked? But sure enough, Santino was no threat to it. He was not one of Maharet’s creatures.

“I do believe he has caught on by now.” Eric waited until Santino had reached his side and shared a conspiratorial look with him. If Santino had been younger and more given to prudery than he was, he might have blushed. And knowing this was half a victory to him. It was a miracle how he changed in Eric’s company. Like a lifting curse the weight of him, the gravitas, pearled off his broad shoulders, allowing for fresh air, for kind thoughts. Santino was a regal being, carved out of the very darkness he surrounded himself with, skin like bone. He had about him the stern elegance of medieval lords and seemed eternally aware of it. He strove to fit the mold he had been poured into. So this was Eric’s gift to him: a sense of unawareness, self-unconsciousness. No other would make him smile and laugh as Eric did with ease, no other could coax him into play. What a blessing, to be for a few hours no more and no less than a man in love.

By early morning they had reached the outskirts of Zacatecas, racing against the brightening horizon. In the first motel they found Eric hurriedly arranged a room for them.  Every other second he glanced over his shoulder to see how is younger companion was holding up. There was a tremendous difference between the stamina of a child of the millennia and of one who hadn’t even reached his seven hundredth year yet. Santino looked utterly spent, pale and straining as he leaned against the counter on crossed forearms.

“In a moment,” Eric soothed him. They hadn’t drawn back the curtains yet which was a relief. The morning sun would do neither of them great harm but it was an unnecessary pressure. Once the key was offered to them, dangled in front of Eric’s face, he snatched it out of the housekeeper’s hand and took Santino by the arm to urge him along.

While Eric prepared the room, checking for any treacherous cracks in the blinds, and forced the thick curtains into place, Santino peeled himself out of his layers of clothes. They spoke in quiet voices now, a sleepy intimacy between them. Eric’s whispers in his ear sent a frisson down the Italian’s spine and he wished that the sun would just freeze on the brink of the world, allow them another hour together. Instead it mercilessly ascended in the sky and forced them under the covers of the small bed they shared. Santino lifted the blanket for his lover as if he was inviting him to a secret room, an exclusive soiree, and Eric slid into place against him. Entangled, Santino’s arms around Eric’s middle and Eric’s face buried in Santino’s hair, they went to their daylight rest.

The next night they stole a car.


End file.
